Functionally Dysfunctional…

Fussing in public, hanging up the phone, cursing each other out, breaking up every other week and headache after headache. It sounds so horrible but at the same time it feels so good. Sounds crazy right? To some people it is normal and that’s functional to them. I have heard some people say that they like organized chaos and for them it’s easy to operate…that’s how I think of dysfunctional relationships that functionally operate.

When I was younger I had a boyfriend that was older than me and to every high school girl it is a dream. Well my dream tuned into a living nightmare. I have never experienced so much mental and emotional abuse. At times it even got physical. What is still baffling to me is the fact that I thought if none of the drama was going on then something was not right. The drama use to drive us, we loved it. Our dysfunction was habitual and in fact quite normal. I was so drained emotionally. As I look back now I think I became a little desensitized. A little jealousy is normal in relationships but my boyfriend took it to another extreme he became jealous of me. He did not want me hanging with my friends, when I got my first car he did not congratulate me and did not support anything that I did. By that time…I had enough. I was done! I went to college and saw that there were more men in this world than the “man” I left back at home. I dated guys and there was one in particular that I was crazy about but it was a reason why it didn’t work. The same dysfunction that my ex-boyfriend and I had, I tried that on him…IT DID NOT WORK. That’s when I learned that what I thought was the “new normal” was not normal at all.

Some of us may not notice how previous relationships have shaped our views on current relationships. It could even distort future relationships if we let it. I have learned that it is also important to allow ourselves some breathing room to recover from bad and even sometimes good relationships. It is never okay to expose yourself to so much dysfunction. And it definitely is not okay to lose yourself to the point that you do not even know how to be yourself in a relationship. Never let something so negative become all you know because you will never have the chance to know something else if you do not allow it. It is funny how something so uncomfortable becomes your comfort…